The Petrova Program
What we can learn from the never-named program in “Project Hail Mary”
“Can I help you with something?”
Spoiler Alert: This article discusses the entire story of Project Hail Mary (1).
“I think you can.”
Spoiler Alert (continued): That’s the story from both the book and the movie. I saw the movie last week – it’s very good – and its plot doesn’t deviate significantly from the book. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll benefit from this article as well.
“My name is Eva Stratt. I’m with the Petrova Taskforce.”
One major challenge for program management professionals (PgMP*) is the time required to gain real-world experience. Because programs are collections of projects that build progressively on the last, it can take years to see a program through its definition to closure phases. Potentially decades to gain multiple experiences through the entire lifecycle. For PgMPs looking to advance their skills more quickly, we need compelling stories that depict programs in great detail. For that purpose, Project Hail Mary and its virtuous antagonist, Eva Stratt, provide a compelling as well as extremely entertaining case study.
Defining “The Petrova Program”
In my last article, “Finding the Project Management in Project Hail Mary,” we tackled the PROJECT in Project Hail Mary. Detailing how the author, Andy Weir, accurately aligns the fictional spaceship Hail Mary’s mission with the real-life Project Management Institute’s (PMI) definition of a project. We also covered the main characters’, Dr. Ryland Grace and alien/engineer Rocky, strengths in their ad hoc, yet ultimately successful project management approach to their space adventures.
But my biggest revelation when analyzing Project Hail Mary through a pro-port management framework comes in the events that happen back on Earth. Namely, that Eva Stratt is leading a program and is therefore a program management professional.
Pro-Port: a compound term that refers to projects, products, programs, and portfolios.
Pro-Port Management: the application of knowledge, skills, and principles to manage a project, product, program, or portfolio.
In the story, Stratt is never designated as a program manager, nor is her work given a program-related title. Specifically, we are introduced to Stratt as the leader of the Petrova Taskforce, “an international body set up to figure out how to deal with the Petrova-line situation” (1, p.45). In this taskforce, Stratt is given unlimited resources and unilateral authority by the United Nations to figure out a solution to the Petrova problem – a.k.a the alien microbes called Astrophage that are sucking up our sunlight and adversely cooling Earth’s climate. Over the years depicted in the story, Stratt develops and directs a series of projects – each building on the information learned from the previous one – to find a way to save humanity. A few of these endeavors include:
Project ArcLight: The mission to send an unmanned probe to Venus to collect samples from the Petrova line.
The Guinea-Pig Phase: Grace’s experience as the first scientist to study Astrophage (as well as Stratt testing if he would die from it).
The analysis of our surrounding solar systems and the discovery of one planet, Tau Ceti, that is near the center of all the infected stars, yet not dimming.
Project Hail Mary: The one-way mission to Tau Ceti to discover why this star is singularly immune to Astrophage’s effects.
The bombing of Antarctica to release methane into the atmosphere and slow Earth’s cooling.
Stratt’s work matches PMI’s definition of a program: “A group of related projects and program activities managed in a coordinated manner to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually” (2, p. 271). The benefit that Stratt is working towards in this case is saving humanity from extinction.
Given her work is never named, but nearly every other new concept in the story is called the Petrova [“taskforce”, “scope”, “line”, “problem”, etc.], I bet the United Nations would have called this work “The Petrova Program.”
Eva Stratt’s PgMP strengths
One can certainly debate the ethics of Stratt’s actions. For instance, it’s not a great day when one needs to physically force a team member onto a suicide mission, but as a program manager, Stratt’s pretty darn spectacular. Framed through the lens of PMI’s performance domains in “The Standard for Program Management,” I want to highlight three elements in particular.
Strategic Alignment
A PgMP… “identifies program outputs and outcomes to provide benefits aligned with organizational strategy goals and objectives” (3, p.65).
As Stratt proceeds from project to project, she continuously directs people and resources from across the planet to meet the highly ambitious achievements of a) studying the Petrova problem extensively and, based on those findings, b) creating an interstellar spaceship to study the singular solar system that appears unaffected by Astrophage.
While there’s the looming threat that the world will plummet into chaos as resource scarcity begins, Stratt keeps the work singularly focused on taking the next step in the project at hand and never wavers from the program’s larger goal – humanity’s continuation. Even in the face of massive setbacks such as the explosion at Baikonur that kills the original scientific crew, Stratt never falters in identifying that best next step (leaving ethics aside) and maintains the work’s momentum towards the final goal.
Collaboration
A PgMP “creates and maintains synergy across stakeholders, both internal and external, to optimize benefits delivery and realization (3, p. 65).
Certainly, many apocalyptic storylines involve the collaboration of Earth’s entire population to defeat aliens – for example, Independence Day or the newest Fantastic Four movie. But those are presented as a singular battle or quick montage. The story of Project Hail Mary is exceptional in that it depicts the ongoing collaboration of a worldwide endeavor over many years, and then, presumably, decades of continued work to maintain human civilization enough to act on the Hail Mary crew’s findings, if ever received.
Throughout the story, you see Stratt navigate the interesting mix of people as they drop their political boundaries in service of the mission, but don’t entirely set them aside either. For example, in the scene where Grace arrives at the Chinese aircraft carrier (soon to be named Stratt’s Vat) with the subsequent stare down between the U.S. Navy helicopter pilot and the Chinese navy, “My pilot leered through the windows at them and they leered right back” (1, p.100). Stratt largely ignores the outright hostilities and protests, nor is she a warm and fuzzy team leader. What she does do well is identify what is needed and who is best to do the job, bringing the right minds and resources together to achieve a specific goal. Collaboration is built through necessity and purpose, allowing the now-superficial needs and grudges of nation-states to fall away in the wake of her leadership. This collaboration grows only tighter as the program evolves, most wonderfully depicted in the interactions among the multinational spaceship crew and the supporting scientific community.
Life Cycle Management
A PgMP “manages the program life cycle and the phases required to facilitate program definition, delivery, and closure (3, p.65).
In the book, we learn about all three phases of the Petrova Program. Through Grace’s flashbacks, we hear about the initial discovery of the Petrova line and the scientific community’s realization that the Sun is dimming. These problem-identification actions largely encompass the Program Definition stage.
Stratt then enters the storyline, with the Petrova Program well underway, following Project Archlight’s recovery of Astrophage and the need for deeper study of the alien microbes. We ride along through the most exciting parts of the implementation phase as told through Grace’s eyes, including his deeper conversations with Stratt. It’s in these discussions that we learn about her mentality and rationale at different points in the program.
Finally, in the book, we are updated on the program closure phase, when the Eridians measure that Earth’s Sun has returned to full luminance. I appreciated that in the movie, we get a clearer image of “program closure” with a greyer, clearly more haggard Stratt watching Grace and Rocky’s videos as they’ve retrieved the Beetles from a very cold ocean. While Stratt never pulls out her “Program Management Plan” or “Master Schedule,” throughout the story, you get a clear sense of each program phase and that Stratt is mindfully driving the work forward, project by project, towards benefit delivery.
What does this “anti-apocalypse” program have to do with my work?
If you are a program management professional, it’s admittedly hard to draw a direct comparison between the Petrova Program and your own work. Our programs may have bold ambitions (e.g., ending homelessness, curing cancer), but humanity’s salvation doesn’t rest solely on the success of any one program. Furthermore, Stratt frankly avoids many of the elements that makes program management so challenging. She had unlimited resources, autonomous decision-making authority, and 100% compliance with full effort from her hand-picked team. Her program’s ecosystem - though not her circumstances - is downright jealousy-inducing.
So, leaving the problem’s scale and all those “free passes” aside, what the story of the Petrova Program best represents is the methods by which human capacity can be coordinated to achieve ambitious goals in the face of high risks and innumerable unknowns. In the real world, the greatest programs are those with no clear solution, but where finding the answer really does matter. Project Hail Mary helps us imagine what leadership can look like when navigating through such uncertainty. Further, Stratt shows us how we can knit together grand projects to achieve even greater goals. By looking at the Petrova Program, we get to walk through a program from start to finish at a pace much faster than the real world offers and ponder what excellence in our chosen profession can look like. An important exercise to keep repeating in anyone’s career.
“Sign of the Times”
For this article’s song pairing, I’m sharing “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles. In the movie, it’s the song that Eva Stratt sings to her program team during their karaoke party. An excellent performance by the actress Sandra Hüller, whom I appreciated for playing Stratt with such warmth, never letting the character slip into the stereotype of the mean and controlling female leader. Her portrayal of Stratt is a key reason to go see the movie, even if you’ve read the book.
References
Weir A. Project Hail Mary. London: Cornerstone Digital; 2021.
Project Management Institute. A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK® guide). 8th ed. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute; 2025.
Project Management Institute PMI. The Standard for Program Management - Fifth Edition. Project Management Institute; 2024.
*In “The Non-Profit Program,” I use the term program management professional with the acronym PgMP to refer to anyone working or interested in program management, regardless of their official job title or credentials. This usage differs from the acronym's use as a credential, where a “PgMP” written after a name indicates successful completion of the Program Management Professional (PgMP) certification offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI).